Season 3 Episode 21: COVID-19 in Oklahoma Indian Country: Stories of Survivance, Resilience, and Memory

Jennifer Frazee, Midge Dellinger, Dr. Farina King, and Dr. Kelly Berry (March 2026)

Click this link to listen to Season 3 Episode 21 featuring a conversation with Oklahoma-based contributors of the edited volume, COVID-19 in Indian Country.

In this special episode of Native Circles, Dr. Farina King brings together Oklahoma-based contributors to COVID-19 in Indian Country: Native American Memories and Experiences of the Pandemic, co-edited by King and Dr. Wade Davies and published by Palgrave Macmillan. Their conversation reflects on the devastating effects of COVID-19 across Indigenous communities while centering stories of resilience, survivance, sovereignty, healing, humor, and the determination to carry culture and community forward.

King begins by remembering her Aunt Florence, a beloved Diné elder and bearer of language and culture who passed away during the pandemic. The episode then features contributors Dr. Kelly Berry, Midge Dellinger, and Jennifer Frazee, along with the voices and perspectives of RaeLynn Butler, Linda Dellinger, and Kiana Hamilton.

Kelly Berry reflects on working with Native elders and educators at Riverside Indian School during the pandemic, where teaching new technologies developed into opportunities for sharing food, humor, stories, and cultural knowledge. Midge Dellinger discusses her COVID-19 oral history work with Muscogee citizens and the importance of documenting the pandemic in Muscogee voices for healing and future generations. Jennifer Frazee, a citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, considers the effects of colonialism and intergenerational disruption on Native families while sharing how Indigenous “aunties,” language learning, and digital communities became sources of connection and resilience.

The episode also includes the reflections of Mvskoke elder Linda Dellinger and RaeLynn Butler, Secretary of Culture and Humanities for the Muscogee (Creek) Nation and co-author of one of the book’s chapters with Dellinger, whose oral histories emphasize the importance of protecting elders, documenting Indigenous experiences, and caring for one another. Kiana Hamilton, an Osage and Cherokee graduate student in Native American Studies at the University of Oklahoma, reflects on how the pandemic exposed longstanding inequities while also demonstrating tribal sovereignty, innovation, and the enduring strength of Native governance and community.

Together, these voices ask us to remember COVID-19 not only as a period of extraordinary grief and loss but also as a story of Indigenous presence and continuance. The conversation highlights the ways Native peoples continued to adapt, teach, remember, laugh, govern, preserve language, care for one another, and move forward during one of the most difficult times of the twenty-first century.